Elder Tanner Smith - Ghana Accra Mission

Hey! Happy Halloween!So I told you already that there is a big service project going on but I'm not sure if I told you anything else besides that. Basically there were 4 eye doctors that came out from Utah with 6,000 pairs of glasses. All types of prescription reading glasses and distance glasses. What was planned was for them to come out last week and then Monday through Thursday they were going to see check people eyes and then give them prescriptions and get them some free eye glasses. The women who organized almost all of the activity is Sister Janet Kirkham. Her husband works for the legal counsel in West Africa and she works very closely with our mission president’s wife. There are two missions in Accra which are the Accra mission (me) and the Accra west. When the service project was announced President Heid agreed to help but this week was very busy for him. He had a mission president seminar this week where Elder Bednar came and trained all of the mission presidents in the Africa West missions. So because he was very busy with this he delegated all of the work to my companion Elder Morris and I. We worked a lot before the actual event with Sister Kirkham to make sure everything was going to go okay. Basically I was just in charge of making sure there was 10 missionaries at the activity at once. I had permission from president Heid to tell people to switch their p-days and to have people leave their area’s for the project. Every day they worked from 8am-6pm and we had to be there every day which was exhausting. There was a lot of success in the service project but the doctors far over estimated their abilities to see as many people as they were expecting.We had people showing up at 4:00 in the morning just to make sure they could get in and almost 500 people at the gates of the stake center by 7:00 am when I was arriving every day. The thing is that they could only see about 400-450 people each day so we had to give out 400 forms in the morning and try and get them to all fit in the church building and then we had to tell everyone else to go home because there wasn’t enough room or time. This was very sad. The hardest part of all of it was having to turn away my own recent converts from Klagon. I had to turn away Bless, Gifty (his pregnant wife), and Theresa. They understood okay that no one else could be seen and took the news pretty good but knowing them and having to turn them away was very hard. Luckily Bless and Theresa came very early the last day so they got in and both got glasses. Even when I was talking to the recent convert that was upset about not being able to be seen, Bless came out of the building and was shocked at what he was saying. He took the man one on one and was talking to him about the gospel and how this shouldn’t shake his faith. Wow. Bless. He was baptized in August and he is already being a better missionary then me! That was the best moment of the entire week, seeing someone I taught, who gained a strong testimony, teach someone else who was struggling very hard.Anyway the week was very hectic and stressful. I think that by the last day President Heid and Sister Heid saw that we were stressed out so they told us to have a P-day today since we couldn’t have one on Monday.Also some big news that I forgot to mention! Elder Bednar came! The sad part about it was that we couldn’t really hear him speak, but it was still cool! So let me explain. Elder Bednar is the Apostle over the Africa West area so every year he makes an appearance to see the mission presidents and usually to speak to members and priesthood leaders. He had a devotional with all stakes in the main Accra area on Thursday but since we were so wiped out from the service project, Elder Morris fell asleep and I didn’t want to wake him so we missed out. We heard that the whole time it was just a question and answer devotional and He was cracking jokes the whole time. We were upset about missing it but today he talked with all the priesthood leadership in Africa west. So every Mission President, Stake president and their councilors, Branch presidents, and bishops. Since President Heid knew we didn’t make it Thursday so he invited us to see and hear him speak to all the priesthood leaders. He is an amazing speaker! He talked about priesthood keys and how they are used throughout the church. He told us that organizations all of the place ask them how they are so well organized. He also talked about how the quorum of the 70 are just extensions of the apostles and that they don’t have keys but if they are directed by the apostles they are using the keys of the apostles to do their job. It was very interesting and he taught it very simplistic.I'll send some pictures that I took during the service project and throughout the last couple weeks so you can get a better idea of whats going on! Please ask lots of questions so that this next Monday I'll have something to write you guys, and tell me how everything is going at home!Love you Guys​

Hey so a big thing that people do here is carry things on their heads. Sometimes its just a small box so nothing crazy and other times its something crazy so I've decided that every week I'll be keeping my eye out for those crazy people that are carrying something crazy on their heads. This weeks winner is a women in Jamestown (downtown Accra) that was carrying an entire fridge on her head! A fridge! I'll make sure to upload the picture down below and hopefully next week I can see someone just as crazy!